"All right, but just this once," he told her. "I got a bad feeling about this, and I want you to remember that if it goes bad."
She squeezed his hand and actually gave him a peck on the cheek that made him feel like a million and blew away any hesitancy.
So while Joel Thebes dozed, Poquah sat in his trance, and Marge slept, they took some of the root she selected from the crewman and broke it off in half and began to chew it, remaining well toward the rear of the boat and away from the others.
It didn't seem to do anything for a while, just leaving a sickly sweet, almost purely surgary taste in his mouth. Still, he found after a while that he was staring at things and that they didn't look or seem the same anymore. The jungle blurred, the dull colors mixing and marching and becoming an endless palette of living colors swirling all about. In a little while he was vaguely aware that he was thoroughly soaking wet, but it did not bother him, nor did he much feel it or reflect that he hadn't even remembered the rainstorm.
And then there was Lathe, who seemed the object of all desire, and pretty soon she was doing something to him that felt really good and he was doing pretty much the same, imitating her, to her, and there was all sorts of stuff that felt good and had no thought behind it at all, and suddenly it was dark and he was sound asleep.
She had already awakened and moved forward to the usual sleeping place when he came out of it at around midnight. He felt pretty mellow, really, but suddenly realized that he was naked and fumbled around, finally finding his loincloth well to the other side of the area, near the far rail. The straps were broken! He managed as best he could, but he wasn't at all sure what had happened. Had he done "it" with her and just not remembered, or had he forced it, or what?
Hell, from the looks of this, she had forced him!
He also had a headache, a stomachache, and aches in places he never even knew had muscles to ache.
Marge floated down to the deck and handed him a fresh loincloth.
"Thanks. I was kinda stuck for a minute."
"No problem," she assured him. "Poquah's mad as hell at you two, though."
"Um, yeah. But if he's really gonna be Daddy, then he's gotta be as responsible as Daddy and watch over and help me, right? He's got no kick. If they're gonna send me to a place like this at my age, then they got to figure I'm at least partly on my own."
"Could be. I guess doing your first drugs and such makes you feel all grown-up, huh? Tonight you are a man."
"No, no! It's not like that!"
"You had no idea what you were swallowing. Some of that shit that these guys have is enough to turn you into one of those muscled morons who pull the oars. Larae I blame more than you, and that's probably what will save your hide in the end with Poquah."
"She only offered me the apple. I was the one who took it."
"'Yeah, but she knew just what she was feeding the two of you. I could tell. She knew how much to take and how to take it, figuring you wouldn't. She wanted you blotto."
"No, that's not it. I mean, why would she? She was the one who wanted it just to pass the time. It's so damned boring!"
"Hell and adulthood are usually boring. No, she wanted you blotto because she's not much older than you are but she's alone, afraid, and completely frustrated. She wanted you, but if you weren't higher than a kite, you'd find out and remember her nasty little secret. Her curse."
"What? I've heard and seen this curse, but I still don't get it. What could be so awful that she'd go in this direction rather than reveal it even to us?"
"The answer to that will tell you whether you are really grown-up and can handle things or whether you're just a kid."
"Do you know?"
"Yeah. Now I do. And I figured out the rest of her story. Pretty obvious once you put the story together with the sorcerer Lothar and figure his options on the problem. The only reason it wasn't immediately obvious was the way he did it, the way I think even the mighty Lothar was forced by the conditions of the curse and the opposition of the demon to do it. It had to be a real curse, not a simple transformation. A transformation wouldn't have done the trick. Probably not allowed under some obscure Rule."
"You're not gonna tell me she's a guy. I know one sex from the other, and that's the kind of stuff you see in plays and movies, not for real."
"Well, we're living in the heart, soul, and origin of every cliché in fiction," she reminded him. "However, in one sense you're right. She was born female, raised female, and is female in almost all respects. That was the problem. Lothar couldn't change her into a male at that stage; the demon would never have accepted it, since no matter what he changed her into, she'd still be the firstborn girl. So, somehow, and I have no idea about this, the sorcerer instead created a curse for her that made her unacceptable as a sacrifice. I don't know what poor unfortunate he used, but he grafted a male organ onto her. It is mostly isolated from the rest of her system, I think—the testosterone just doesn't get through to her. She's in every way female, but the route to that femininity is blocked. She became damaged goods, neither fish nor fowl, without the purity a sacrifice demanded, but so bound to her is this that to remove it would rip her guts out. It was a minor demon; he just couldn't figure out a way around it. All he could do was vent his fury and command her to come here, where even curses of that complexity might be unraveled by smarter and more powerful demons."
He didn't want to hear it. "I don't believe you!" he almost shouted at Marge, even though he really did. "You mean that under that skirt—"
"You mustn't blame her. She didn't choose it, and in all but that one area she is very much still a she, which must be the most frustrating thing in the world. When you're dealing with that level of world-class sorcerer, even the little things get handled. It's why she tried to avoid you on the ship over and why she fled when you contacted her. Only her fear and loneliness led her to take up my offer."
Irving felt sick. "Then we—that is, tonight, we—oh, no!"
At least it explained why he had no power over her, but it also meant that she'd reversed his erotic dreams. She, if that was still the right term, had seduced him.
"Quit feeling sorry for yourself!" Marge snapped. "She's the one with the curse and the problem, not you. And you are the one who took that drug with her by your choice, your lust. That's what I meant about growing up, Irving. In the end, nobody did anything to you but you. You removed your limits and your spells; you fantasized and lusted after her and dragged her into our group. She didn't try and join us, remember. And you took the drug with her. Now, how you handle this inside yourself and how you handle yourself in Larae's presence will determine just how grown-up you really are."
Right now he didn't feel all that grown-up. It wasn't fair! Damn and double damn! He felt used. Unclean, sort of. Bits and pieces of just what they'd done earlier came back to him in his emotional torment, and he felt like blaming anybody but himself. Grow up? Hell, nobody ever was that grown-up!
Oddly, as he stared out into the pitch darkness of the rain forest, a thought came to him from out of nowhere: This is how Dad must have felt.
Felt wrong, weak, compromised, ashamed, and unwilling to admit the truth or face down his son. Joe hadn't acted very grown-up, either, had he? And the son had cursed and blasted him for running ever since.
Now it was the son who wanted to run, who didn't want to face the way things were with somebody he'd sort of assumed responsibility for. But how could he just keep on after knowing? How could he treat Larae the same as before? Or even as just a friend? Even a companion? Particularly now that she'd used him.
But hadn't he dreamed of using her? Wasn't that why he'd taken that drug with her in the first place?
That was different!
How?
Only because in his own scenarios he was the user rather than the victim. Damn it, it made him feel like a skunk. She had done this to him, and here he was feeling guilty about it!
But it was so—so unnatural!
In a world
of fairies, nymphs, gnomes, curses, demons on street corners, and resident sorcerers, what in hell was natural?
So Dad had gone off to conquer the evil sorcerer and had been changed in the process into a wimp of a bimbo wood nymph. "Hi, Irving! Guess what? But don't worry, I'll stick around and be your role model, anyway."
What if he had been the one who was changed? Would he have acted differently than Joe had? Would he have faced his son like that, forever like that, and would the son have accepted it? He'd been blaming his father for not doing just that for years, but what would his own reaction have been?
He knew the answer. He knew that what he'd always thought he would have done was what he most certainly should have done under those circumstances, but it wasn't what he really would have thought or felt or done. Nobody grew up that quickly. Nobody should have had to.
Marge had no idea what Irving was really thinking or how he'd finally resolve this, if he could, but she did emphatically sense the growing buildup of guilt, shame, and emotional turmoil within him.
Maybe in another night or so he'd at least have worked up sufficient guilt to allow her to solve her immediate problem by helping him solve his.
Poquah rarely smoked a pipe, and when he did, it was only when the most important things were imminent. It was a pleasure he shared with his elfin brethren but one that also never quite fit his self-image and lifestyle. But in the predawn hours he was on deck smoking the pipe and leaning against the rail, looking out at nothing in particular.
Irving wasn't sure who he wanted less to see and talk to, Larae or Poquah, but as much as he wanted just to go overboard and make his way through the jungle to someplace where they'd never heard of him and wouldn't find him, he wasn't really about to do it. He wasn't at all sure he wouldn't have, though, if he'd also shared his father's immortality.
Marge had reported the Imir as furious, but Poquah never showed emotion and was always in perfect control. He was not in fact nearly as angry as he'd been initially and not entirely angry at the boy or the girl, particularly since Marge had briefed him on all that had transpired and all that had been revealed.
"Poquah, I—"
The Imir, barely visible in the predawn grayness, held up his hand. "Growing up is learning, often by committing mistakes," he said softly. "The trick is to grow up and learn from those mistakes without allowing them to destroy you. Have you learned?"
"I—well, sure, I've learned. I'm just not sure if I learned all that I could have or that the lesson is correct. Damn it, Poquah, it's not fair!"
"Nothing much in life is certain except its unfairness. Good people die; evil lives to a ripe old age. Crime pays much of the time. Wars ravage schoolyards as thoroughly as battlefields. People tolerate and even create the grossest of dictatorships rather than risk hunger and uncertainty in freedom. Everybody expects a free lunch, but nobody can give such a thing. Someone always pays. That's not just something in the Rules, you know. It's the way things work. If we are not constantly tested by fighting through valleys of weeping and crucibles of fire, then nothing we can gain is worthwhile." He paused. "So what will you do now?'
Irving shook his head. "I don't know. I don't know what to do."
"She is asleep now. She has slept better tonight than at any time since she joined us. She also does not know that we all now know her secret. It is her great shame. I believe she is terrified that someone will find out."
"Well, I can't hide it. I can't pretend anymore. I wouldn't know how. That's something more mature people can handle, maybe, but it's just not in me, not yet."
"Then you must be totally honest with her, but that is a grave risk. If she cannot accept us knowing and you knowing in particular, she will react as your father did and will flee at the first opportunity. At least she cannot kill herself. That option is removed by her geas. She is not the owner of her fate and thus has no right to take her life. That at least we need not worry about."
"Yeah, but if she runs, out here, in this . . ."
The Imir nodded. "There is still a day and a night left. The creatures in there would be sensitized to her curse, but they would feel free to use or abuse her. She wouldn't die at their hands; she'd just wish she could."
"Great! More load heaped on me!"
"I wouldn't do it if there were any other way. Understanding, forgiving, sympathizing aren't enough. You must convince her that you accept her. That it doesn't matter. She has had enough of pity and of punishment, I think. This past night proved that. She seized an initiative and acted upon it, which is very encouraging. It means she's at the point of finally accepting her situation, of living with it as a permanent condition rather than just moping around and hoping she'll die or wake up. If she were to get the idea, particularly at this crucial juncture in our travels, that she could be an equal and not have to hide in shame, then she might actually have the potential to contribute to this expedition, which I think may be far shorter ahead than I originally thought."
"Huh? How so?"
"Something darker than anything I have ever experienced or even imagined is afoot here. I can feel its enormity, its oppressive weight and sheer power, the farther in we travel. Odd to think of Yuggoth as having a cancer, but it does, and that cancer is spreading at a rate that says there is no time for caution now. Something draws me as well to its source. Marge, too, I think, and you to a lesser but still important extent. We must settle all the turmoil within our company, and we must do so now. We will need each other like never before in very short order."
Irving didn't sleep much at all after that, but he let Larae get up and wash and eat and get comfortable. She did seem different, both softer and more self-confident and definitely bound to him in some emotional way.
That was going to make this pretty damned tough, and he'd gone over and over how he'd manage it. In a sense, he knew he had her fate in his hands, and that was a heavy burden if he blew it.
Finally, though, he couldn't put if off any longer. "Larae?"
She smiled at him. "Thank you for last night."
He tried not to show discomfort. "It's all right. I think maybe it's time I told you a little about my own self and other things in more detail than you've heard them so far."
"You don't have to."
"Yes, I do. And I want to start by telling you about my father ..."
WE'RE OFF TO SEE THE LIZARD
Just say no to drugs or they will do something wrong to you.
—Rules, Vol. XLI, p. 194(c)
There! What did I tell you?
—Reagan, N.
AT THE UPPER LIMITS OF NAVIGATION ON THE RIVER, whose name they never did quite get clearly in their minds—it meandered horribly, and with every bend it seemed to have a new and totally unrelated name—was a small inland town that nobody had named but that was clearly their first destination.
In spite of its remoteness, the town looked oddly familiar to those from Earth, if a bit out of place in this geographic setting, with large Gothic-style Victorian houses peeking out of the ends of the jungle like an enormous collection of haunted houses. The jungle in fact ended within sight of the town and very dramatically; the mountains seemed to be a two-mile-high wall.
Irving stared at the black rock beyond, and his jaw dropped. "Holy smokes! We have to go up there?"
"Over it," Joel Thebes told him. "It is not all that bad but can be quite uncomfortable."
"Hey, I'm in pretty fair shape, and there's no way I can climb that," the boy maintained. "As for the others, I don't think Marge can even fly that high, and she's the only other one with a chance."
"You misunderstand," Thebes told him. "We do not climb. As usual, we ride. You'll see, you'll see."
Larae was still uncomfortable with her secret out, as it were, but she at least accepted the fact that they were not going to cast her out, not even Irving, who had good cause for doing so. She was determined to do what she could for them.
"Will we have to stay in this town overnight?" she asked Thebes. "
It does not even look inhabited."
"Oh, it is inhabited, all right," Thebes assured her. "Just not by folks who are still, well, like the rest of us." Considering that he was including himself in that "us," that meant that those who lived there were probably very unpleasant. "However, we should not have to remain here long if all the connections are right."
Poquah surveyed the small dock area as their things were placed there for them and the chameleon faerie, as Marge had begun to think of them, filed off as well, spouting their inane bad dialogue but seemingly oblivious to their surroundings. Either they were totally in character and thus natural actors or they really were pretty dumb.
DG5 - Horrors of the Dancing Gods Page 26